medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (9. June) is the feast day of:
1) Primus and Felician (d. ca. 303, perhaps). P. and F. are Roman martyrs of the Via Nomentana included in the _Depositio Martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 364. In the seventh century pope Theodore I (642-49) translated their remains to Rome's church of Santo Stefano Rotondo, where they flank the Cross in a seventh-century mosaic (recently restored):
http://tinyurl.com/ysvul3
Their images in the mosaic may be seen in greater detail in muddy, pre-restoration black-and-white images on these two pages:
http://tinyurl.com/25lw7f
http://tinyurl.com/27eawh
P. and F. have had a church dedicated to them in Pavia since perhaps the ninth century, though the present facade is dated to the later twelfth century and additions to and reworkings of the building from the later Middle Ages through the eighteenth century render a determination of its original date highly conjectural. Herewith a couple of views of the facade:
http://www.miapavia.it/i/turismo/2005/primofiliciano_g.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/26487n
Certainly by the ninth century these saints' legendary Passio (BHL 6922) had come into existence. This makes them brothers martyred in the Great Persecution, interrogated separately and then tortured and executed jointly. The English-language translation of the third nocturn lesson from their proper reproduces the essential story line:
http://tinyurl.com/2gl7t
Laura Gibbs' Bestiaria Latina Blog gives a text of Jacopo da Varazze's treatment of P. and F. in the _Legenda Aurea_ and also three expandable views of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century illuminations of scenes of their suffering:
http://tinyurl.com/kpdy6
Views of the martyrdom of P. and F. in a late thirteenth-century _Legenda Aurea_ (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, f. 65) are available towards the bottom of iihs page:
http://tinyurl.com/33p2qn
2) Ephraem the Syrian (d. 373). E. (also Ephrem, Ephram). E. was born into a Syriac-speaking community in the Roman garrison town of Nisibis in upper Mesopotamia, today's Nusaybin in Turkey's Mardin province. His energy and learning led to his early ordination to the diaconate and to appointment as teacher by his bishop (St. Jacob of Nisibis, d. ca. 339). E. was extraordinarily productive both as an hymnographer and as a biblical commentator. The Roman cession of Nisibis to Persia in 363 entailed the removal of its Syriac Christian population to Edessa, the center of Syriac Christianity. This relocation was probably fortunate for the survival of E.'s work and the spread of his reputation.
Shortly after E.'s death legendary accounts of him at variance with the evidence of his writings began to circulate. Some of his writing was translated into other "Eastern" languages, including Greek and Coptic, and a large corpus of pseudo-Ephraemic texts arose. Many of the latter were still ascribed to E. when in 1920 pope Benedict XV proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church.
Herewith some views of Nisibis'/Nusaybin's largely eighth-century church of St. Jacob (Mor Yacqub):
http://tinyurl.com/2oz3u5
http://tinyurl.com/34qq3k
The church's baptistery portion dates to 359, when E. was still in Nisibis. The first of these views is from 1911:
http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/photos/fpx/R_092.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2o3hfl
Jacob's tomb (his relics are said to be in Edessa) is in the crypt of the baptistery:
http://tinyurl.com/2o9xxf
3) Maximian of Syracuse (d. 594). We know about M. from the correspondence of pope St. Gregory the Great. He was a Sicilian who moved to Rome, entered Gregory's monastery of St. Andrew, served under Pelagius II and Gregory as papal apocrisarius in Constantinople, and ended his life as bishop of Syracuse and papal legate for all Sicily. M. was one of G.'s sources for miracle stories in the _Dialogues_. G.'s letter to M. (_Ep._ 4. 11) on the incompatibility of simultaneous monastic and clerical service by the same person was included in revised form in Gratian's _Decretum_.
4) Columba of Iona (d. 597). C. (also Colum Cille) was a member of a northwest-Irish branch of the royal kin-group of the Uí Néill. We know very little about his life prior to his founding, along with several close relatives, of the monastery of Iona in the Irish kingdom of Dál Riata in the southwest of today's Scotland. During his thirty-four years at Iona C. organized a family of monastic settlements, including some back in Ireland (e.g. Durrow, founded by C. on a return trip between 585 and 589). The Irish vernacular poem _Amra Coluim Cille _ ("Eulogy of Colum Cille"), written shortly after C.'s death, speaks in some detail about his learning and his monastic vocation. The major source for C.'s life, a Vita (BHL 1886, 1887) by his later seventh-century successor at Iona, Adomnán, also documents his early cult, which was already popular as well as monastic. In the central Middle Ages various anonymous poems in Latin and in Irish were ascribed to him.
5) Richard of Andria (d. ca. 1199). Last year's notice of today's less well known saint of the Regno (and supposed Englishman), a twelfth-century bishop of the Apulian town of Andria, is here (most of the links still work):
http://tinyurl.com/yrnj84
Best,
John Dillon
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